All men are called to a father-like role in society. Not everyone is blessed with children of their own, but all men are called to act responsibly, with a kindly strength, to be gentlemanly toward and provide firm love, guidance, and protection toward children. In times gone by, we’d call it chivalry — to operate with a religious, moral, and social code.

Jesus Christ uses intimate language to communicate with his Father. In his grace, he shares that intimacy with us, and invites us to call him our Father. When Christ taught his apostles the Lord’s Prayer, he taught all Christians how to pray and relate to God the Father.

God is the ultimate patriarch. He is the head of the heavenly family — the angels in heaven worship and glorify him ceaselessly. He is also Father of the earthly family — he created man in his image and calls us his sons and daughters in redemption. By becoming Christians, born again through baptism in water and the Holy Spirit, through our faith in him, we become children of God. He adopts us as his own.

As our great Father, God protects and provides for his children. Just as our biological father provides for us by putting food on the table to sustain our bodies, God provides for us through the Eucharist, sustaining our souls. It could be said we have a temporal father to take care of our physical needs, and a spiritual Father to look after our spiritual wellbeing. But God is greater than that; he has a hand in both. Through his omnipotence, God is with us in everything, even our suffering. Jesus Christ — fully man and fully God — died on the cross for us. He suffered for our sake. Therefore, we can be reminded that when we are suffering, Christ is with us in our suffering. It is a sign of how much our Father loves us. God loves us so much, that he gave us his only begotten son.

All of this goes to show how deeply benevolent fatherhood is ingrained within the fabric of creation. Remove fatherhood, and things come undone.

The Goods of Fatherhood

This is why the enemy is focused on defeating “The Patriarchy.” The only time we hear that word these days is in a derogatory fashion, “down with The Patriarchy.” The enemy lies through omission and a twisting of the truth, and therefore will paint this as a good thing — usually with lines of equity: “There are more men in senior positions, therefore the natural conclusion is that men are oppressing women, destroy The Patriarchy!” Or, “The gender pay gap is a form of oppression, smash The Patriarchy!” We know these to be fabrications. They are untrue for many reasons. The statistics show that there is no gender pay gap — men and women in the same role get paid the same amount; that is the law. One of the reasons there are more men in leadership positions than women is because women take time off to have babies — an incredibly good thing. Motherhood is the most important vocation in the world, after all. But the stats are manipulated by some because they want to paint women as victims at the hand of men.

The enemy’s response would be that men and women should be equal in everything. That is not possible.

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